The scare tactic: do fear appeals predict motivation and exam scores?

Prior to high-stakes exams, teachers use persuasive messages that highlight to students the possible consequences of failure. Such messages are known as fear appeals. This study examined whether fear appeals relate to self- and non-self-determined motivation and academic performance.

Achievement goals in adult learners: evidence from distance education.

Background: There is evidence that learners may adopt different kinds of achievement goals: mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance. In higher education, this evidence has mainly come from young people who have recently gone straight from secondary education to higher education. However, higher education is increasingly populated by older students, and it has been theorised that the relationship between goals and achievement might be very different for adult learners.

Working in health access programme (WHAP): initial results.

Context: Academic achievement and social class are positively related and applications to medical schools reflect a class-based bias favouring middle-class candidates. Applying a measure that is class-free could be useful as an indicator of a potential good health professional may widen the pool of applicants. In the Working in Health Access Programme (WHAP), we report on the potential usefulness of such a measure.

Do undergraduates' motives for studying change as they progress through their degrees?

Background: Research has suggested that students can approach their studies with different goals, one goal being to understand material (mastery) and another to obtain better grades than others (performance).

Aim: The main aim of this study was to assess whether these goals change as students progress through their degrees.

Sample: 1857 students at a Scottish university.

I used to like it but now I don't: the effect of the transfer test in Northern Ireland on pupils' intrinsic motivation.

Background: Research has suggested that the pressure of exams could undermine pupils' interest in their subjects, but almost all of this research has been conducted in laboratory settings. The Transfer Test in Northern Ireland provides an unusual opportunity to assess the effects of exam pressure in real life because some 10- and 11-year-olds sit a Transfer Test to be admitted to grammar school while others are not tested until they are 14.

Aim: To assess the effect of exams on pupils' interest in their subjects both during the period before the exam and after the results are known.